Sunday, April 21, 2013

Mollusks Are Forever

I don't usually enjoy the process of writing. I'm not sure if other writers do or not, but I hardly ever do. However, when I was between jobs in the summer of 2005 I started writing the poems that would be included in Submerged Structure. My writing process almost always begins not by writing, but by reading a pile of books. That summer I was reading Billy Collins and Richard Brautigan a lot, and it motivated me to move away from writing about the nitty gritty of sin I had chronicled in Flesh Wounds, and just write anything that came to mind.

Mollusks Are ForeverThis poem Is a bivalve That transforms Traffic altercations Into pearls And shit into Shinola, All while scuttling silently On the floors of silent seas.This poem Is a tough customer That builds it’s own shelter, Is impervious to Helen Vendler’s criticism, And through a quirk of nature Has learned to go fuck itself.But despite its hard exterior This poem is soft-hearted And wants nothing more than To give your wife a pearl necklace.